Sony VAIO E Series Laptop Range Expanded

In February we brought you news of the new Sony E Series laptop and now nearly two months later they are back with more information on the range, specifically with the 14” and 17” versions that are set to be released within the near future.

But before we look at what makes then unique it’s worth looking at some of the features that they share not only with each other, but with other laptops in the E series – for a start they all come equipped with processors from the 2010 Intel Core family, which combined with up to 4GB DDR3 RAM should be able to cope with whatever you wish to throw at it.

You’ve also got a pretty wide range of storage options available (up to 1TB) and a more than respectable range of ATI Mobility Radeon 5000 series graphics cards to choose from which means that pretty much whatever model you go for you will be able to browse, play games (although perhaps not the latest examples) and multitask with comfort.
But perhaps the best features on the E series is the three buttons that sit on the slim chassis entitled ‘WEB’, ‘ASSIST’ and ‘VAIO’ each of which provides a one touch shortcut to something that will, at some point, be useful to you!

I’ll start with perhaps the best of the three: ‘WEB’. This allows you to start browsing the internet without booting up your PC, meaning you can get online quickly which is ideal when you just need to nip on to check and email or look something up, and the fact that it supports multi-tabbed and split browsing should make it even easier to use. Obviously it’s a pain if you then have to boot up your PC anyway, but that’s a small sacrifice!

Secondly there’s the ‘ASSIST’ button, which is essentially a fast track to the VAIO care which should help you to maintain, diagnose and ultimately fix your VAIO if you get yourself in need of help!

Finally there’s the imaginatively named ‘VAIO’ button which although you would have thought had something to do with the upkeep of your laptop in fact leads to a glorified media gallery which I guess saves you the effort of finding it on your desktop.

So having refreshed out minds of the E series let’s have a look at the specifics of the 14” and 17” versions…

Sony Vaio E Series 14″

If you were to think of one word to describe these laptops then unfortunately it might be ‘garish’ as (the glossy black and white aside) the pink, blue and green colours are the kind that you would be able to spot from quite a way away — although I’m guessing that is kind of the point!

Having said that it does look very nice with a silver VAIO logo on the gloss finished on the cleverly patterned top, though you have to admit that perhaps the vivid colours on the inside of the laptop do make it look a little too childish… but then there are the black/white options for you, and the 14” size is great for those that need a little more mobility!

Speaking of which the screen offers a 1600×900 (which Sony feel the need to tell us is a 16:9 aspect ratio…) which is backlit by LED which means you should get the high-contrast and clear colour that you expect.

Sony Vaio E Series 17″

The 17” version is perhaps more of an all rounder offering a more practical screen size for a less practical chassis (although it is still relatively sleek). It serves more of a desktop replacement than a portable companion, especially when you go for the top of the range options across the specification range!

The screen is also an improvement giving a HD option with a 1920×1080 resolution, yet again lit by LED, and it also comes with a Blu-ray drive for the more complete HD experience — this is also the option if you wish to have a numeric keypad as that’s something that, due to the obvious size constraints, the 14” version doesn’t offer.

So those are the latest additions to the Sony Vaio E series, and both seem to follow the solid all-rounder trend that we saw before, and both appear to do it well! Whilst prices haven’t been release yet it would be safe to assume that they won’t be cheap but perhaps the quality would be worth paying for…